Oculus Quest Specs, Price, Release Date and Everything We Know

At the current Oculus Connect 5 conference, developers have unveiled a highly anticipated standalone VR headset called the Oculus Quest. With tracking like the Rift in a headset that doesn't need to be tethered to an expensive PC, the Quest could represent the best VR headset option. Below we will reveal everything we know about it.

There has been some confusion as to whether the Quest is a new version of the Oculus Go or a sequel to the Oculus Rift. In short, it is not. Yes, the Quest is standalone like Go and has Rift-like features, but it has its own ecosystem that falls right in the middle of those two devices. The device will not be based on the Gear VR content library as Go, and any Oculus Rift games that appear will be adapted to Quest. You won't need any other Oculus hardware to get into the Quest, and you won't need a PC.

Tracking is similar to a rift, but not identical.

The Oculus Quest's biggest selling point has always been its 6DOF tracking, which puts it head and shoulders above the 3DOF Go headset. While Go allows you to rotate and tilt your head to look around in VR, Quest is closer to Rift in which you can move your head forward, backward, left, right, up and down and have all of those movements replicated in the virtual world. But this is not identical to the Rift; the crucial difference is that the Quest uses Oculus Insight's new inside-out tracking system.

Instead of placing external sensors around your room to track you like with the Rift, the Quest has four wide-angle sensors mounted on the corners of the front bezel. They read the room around you to find your position in it, and you can also create a Guardian system to avoid obstacles like tables and chairs. This allows you to track the "Beyond Roomscale" Quest and even store tracking settings for multiple rooms, though it can also mean that tracking won't work correctly if you place your controllers behind you. We need to do more extensive testing with the limitations of this system.

Another big plus for the Quest is that many other standalone 6DOF headsets don't have - it's two fully trackable hand controllers, which are newer versions of the touch controllers that ship with the Rift. They have the same number of buttons, including analog sticks, triggers, capture buttons, and front panel buttons, and follow your movements exactly as long as the sensors can see them. To that end, Oculus has redesigned the tracking wheel seen on the original Touch to sit on top of the controllers instead of underneath them, which can give them more visibility.

The Quest is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile processor. It's not exactly top of the line; it was used, for example, in the Samsung 2017 Galaxy S8 smartphone, but replaced it with the next generation 845 this year's S9. This is, however, a generation beyond the reach of the Snapdragon 821 family of processors found inside the Oculus Go. It's important to note that Quest's dedicated hardware will mean that all that power could be devoted to VR.

Of course, you can expect amazing clarity and realism in games from a headset, but there are limitations! The latest and greatest Oculus Rift games will not be able to run on the device. Some of the most demanding Rift games already take full advantage of graphics cards far more powerful than what you'll find in Quest, but it will still be enough for many developers to scale and port their experience to a new device.

To this end, Oculus is preparing many new and well-known games for the Quest. During the Connect 5 conference, we learned that popular games like Moss, The Climb and Robo Recall will be available on the new headset. They also showed their own multiplayer title Dead and Buried.

 Finally, Oculus revealed a list of developers who are "experimenting" with Quest, which includes some of the biggest names in VR such as Ready at Dawn, Insomniac Games and High Voltage Software. In fact, over 50 games will be ready to launch next year. There's also a new Star Wars VR series, Vader Immortal, debuting on the platform.

Another major improvement for the Quest is an improved display resolution of 1600 x 1440, which is actually better than the current Rift, although the screen door effect (gaps between pixels are visible) has not yet been completely eliminated.

On the front side, the Quest uses an excellent speaker system, first shown in Go. While the Rift, these are regular headphones. Quest will directly project the sounds of the virtual world directly into your ears, giving you a more immersive experience, but also allowing you to hear the outside world.

The Oculus Quest is priced similarly to the Oculus Rift, at $399 today (double the $199 price of the Oculus GO). However, keep in mind that the Quest is an all-in-one system, meaning everything you need to jump into VR is already built into the headset. Meanwhile, the Rift still requires an expensive PC. Thus, the price is significantly lower than that of the Rift.

And the last thing we know is that the Quest will go on sale in the spring of 2019. There is no official date, although we have heard that the company is aiming for a QXNUMX launch. 

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